GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 AMD FM2 Motherboard

Without a doubt, GIGABYTE is one of the top motherboard computer component companies out there. GIGABYTE has a very extensive array of product ranging from computer mice, cases, cooling, motherboards, graphics cards and more. GIGABYTE didn't stop at components though, they also have a line of Notebooks, and netbooks. There isn't much that GIGABYTE doesn't offer for the industry today. For now though, we are going to focus on the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 AMD Socket FM2 motherboard. The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is the top FM2 motherboard in GIGABYTE's FM2 product stack and retails for only $127.06 Shipped.

The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is loaded with features from the start. To start out the extensive list of features, the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is built using the latest AMD A85X chipset for the new AMD A-Series 'Trinity' APU's. One of the biggest changes in the A85X chipsets is the addition of two addtional SATA III 6Gbps ports for a total of eight ports, and an additional two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports which gives the AMD A85X chipset a total of four SS USB 3.0 ports.

The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is part of the Ultra durable 5 stack of motherboards. The Ultra Durable 5 technology is a combination of different technologies. For the CPU power delivery it is a combination of high current capable components for the CPU power zone that include IR3550 PowIRstage IC's, 2X Copper PCB, and 60 Amp high current Ferrite Core Chokes. With these components combined the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 delivers cooler temperatures and higher power efficiency. The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 uses Digital Power via an exclusive Digital PWM controller array. This allows GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 motherboards like the F2A85X-UP4 to deliver much more control and precision to the x86 and GPU aspects of the AMD APU.

GIGABYTE has also implemented their 3D UEFI BIOS which is a definite step up from the traditional BIOS that we were working with on the previous generation AMD A75 chipset. In addition to the 3D BIOS, the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is also running dual BIOS chips. If the primary BIOS chip somehow gets corrupted, the secondary BIOS chip will restore it.

Support for @BIOSSupport for Q-FlashSupport for Xpress InstallSupport for EasyTuneSupport for Smart Recovery 2Support for Auto GreenSupport for ON/OFF ChargeSupport for 3TB+ UnlockSupport for Q-Share

Bundle Software

Norton Internet Security (OEM version)LucidLogix Virtu MVP

Operating System

Support for Microsoft Windows 8/7/Vista/XP

Form Factor

ATX Form Factor; 30.5cm x 24.4cm

Retail Box and Bundle

The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 retail package boasts about a couple of the key features as well as mentioning some of the technologies that have gone into the design of the board. Most prominently we have the Ultra Durable 5 emblazoned on the left side, emblems for the AMD A10 APU's, AMD A85 chipset, and AMD Radeon Graphics technology. Along the bottom edge of the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 packaging GIGABYTE highlights the Digital Power, 3D BIOS, as well as the 2X Copper PCB.

There is no shortage of marketing text on the back of the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 retail packaging.

The bundle that accompanies the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 includes three pairs (6 cables) of SATA cables, I/O shield, manuals and a driver disc. It isn't the most extensive bundle we've come across, but it gets the job done and supplies us with what we need to fire up our system when the time comes.

Once we remove the layer of cardboard separating the bundle from the motherboard we can catch our first glimpse of the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4. Though obscured by the anti-static bag we can see that the F2A85X-UP4 is one of the GIGABYTE boards done in all black.

GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 FM2 Motherboard Layout

The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is one of the lucky boards to be blacked out. While some say it's overdone, it's still a good look that will fit in with most case designs. I'm not one to base my purchases off of what the board looks like, but it certainly doesn't hurt to look good.

Taking a closer look at the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 and the surrounding area, there are a few things that stand out. On the corner of the board we have three buttons, the big red one is the power button (call me captain obvious), the small blu one and the small black one are the reset switch, and the clear CMOS button. Truth be told, there were a couple of times during my time with the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 FM2 motherboard that I nearly hit the clear CMOS button rather than the reset switch. It may simply be a case of the I D 10 T error when I hit nearly hit the wrong button, but I do wish that the buttons were a little less similar and better marked. Moving along the edge of the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 PCB, we can find the 24pin motherboard power, as well as the internal SuperSpeed USB 3.0 header. I do like the fact that GIGABYTE went off the beaten path with the USB 3.0 header and didn't stick with the traditional blue. We have seen several motherboard that the USB 3.0 header sticks out like a sore thumb on a blacked out (or other theme) motherboard by using the blue header. Between the 24pin power and the SS USB 3.0 header we can find a single 4pin system fan header. The main focus on this corner of the F2A85X-UP4 is the DIMM slots, while much of the board is black, GIGABYTE was smart enough to use two different colored DIMM slots for the two different channels. The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 will support up to 64Gb of 1.5V DDR3 DRAM with support of frequencies up to 1866MHz.

Swinging the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 around, we can see the six SATA III 6Gbps ports, dual soldered on BIOS chips, Debugging LED display, a seventh SATA III 6Gbps port, front panel header, a second 4pin system fan header, and four internal USB 2.0 headers. Just to the inside of the front panel header there is a second point that we can clear the CMOS, this time it is a pair of pins that once jumped will clear the BIOS settings.

Swinging the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 around once again we can catch a good look at the expansion slots and the integrated controllers. The F2A85X-UP4 is graced with three PCIe x1 slots, three PCIE x16 slots and a single PCI slot. All of the PCIe slots conform to PCIe Gen 2, which isn't a real issue since most cards can't even utilize the full bandwidth of PCIe Gen 2 let-alone PCIe Gen 3. Picking up where we left off along the right edge of the board, after the internal USB 2.0 headers, we have the T.P.M. (Trusted Platform Module) header, COM port header, SPDIF out, as well as the front panel audio header. Along the leading edge of the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 we can see the ITE IT8728F Super I/O controller, Realtek ALC892 High Definition Audio Controller, as well as the Realtek RTL8111E Gigabit Ethernet controller.

Looking at the final corner of the board, we can see the 8pin CPU power connector, the Etrontech EJ168A SuperSpeed USB 3.0 host controller, this provides the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 with an additional pair of SS USB 3.0 ports on the back panel.

There isn't much lacking on the I/O panel of the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4. There is a grand total of six USB ports, with four of them being SS USB 3.0, an eSATA III port, VGA D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort, Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 jack), optical SPDIF out, six audio jacks (Center/Sub-woofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone), and a single PS/2 port that can be used for either a Keyboard or mouse.

The Legit Reviews Test System

The Test System

Before we look at the numbers, let's take a brief look at the test system that was used. All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running.

AMD A85 Test Platform:

The AMD Socket FM2 platform that we used to test the AMD A10-5800K processor was the Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 motherboard with BIOS F3b that came out on 9/19/2012. The Corsair Dominator Platinum 8GB 1600Mhz memory kit was run at 1.50V with 9-9-9-24 1T timings.

You can see CPU-Z version 1.61.3 and screen shots below for additional platform information.

SiSoftware Sandra 2012 SP6

The Sisoftware Sandra 2012 SP3 benchmark utility just came out a few weeks
ago and we have started to include it in our benchmarking. Sandra2012 comes with
support for Virtualisation (Virtual PC/Server, Hyper-V, VMware) and
GPGPU (OpenCL, DirectX 11 DirectCompute), but today we will be using the
program to look at memory and CPU performance!

Benchmark Results: The new AMD FM2 'Trinity' APU's don't have the memory performance of the first generation Llano APU's.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark for measuring the 3D graphics performance of gaming PCs. 3DMark 11 uses a native DirectX 11 engine designed to make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

Since Futuremark is releasing 3DMark11 today we decided to run the benchmark at both performance and extreme presets to see how our hardware will run.

GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 3DMark11 Performance Preset Benchmark Results

Benchmark results: It doesn't come as a surprise to us that the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 was able to mop up the competition in 3DMark 11. The AMD 5800K APU takes advantage of the AMD Radeon HD 7660D graphics processor which is significantly faster than the Llano Radeon HD 6550D or the Intel HD 4000 graphics on the Intel 'Ivy Bridge' system.

Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs is a 2012 open world action-adventure video game developed by United Front Games in conjunction with Square Enix London Studios and published by Square Enix. The game was released on August 14, 2012, for Microsoft Windows. The game uses the Havok physics engine.

We used the Adrenaline Sleeping Dogs Benchmark tool to benchmark this game title to make sure the benchmarking was consistent. We tested with 'Medium' quality setting at 1280x1024 and 1920x1024 resolutions.

Benchmark Results: Once again the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 and the AMD 5800K top the charts in Sleeping Dogs.

AMD SATA III 6Gbps Performance

CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for drives and enables rapid measurement of sequential and random read/write speeds. Note that CDM only supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with a queue depth of 32 (as noted) for the last listed benchmark score. This can skew some results in favor of controllers that also do not support NCQ.

Benchmark Results: The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 with the AMD A85 chipset doesn't vary much from what we see on the GIGABYTE A75-D3H. The F2A85X-UP4 averaged 480MB/s read and 295.7MB/s write. This is a slightly faster read (<2%)and a slightly lower write speed (~.5%).

HD Tune Pro 4.01 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes
many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting,
folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file
benchmark.

AMD HD Tune Pro 5.00 Write Benchmark Results

AMD HD Tune Pro 5.00 Read Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: Typically HD Tune mimics the results in CrystalDiskMark above, though it doesn't today. The average read between the GIGABYTE A75-D3H and the F2A85X-UP4 shows a difference of 360.8MB/s in favor of the F2A85X-UP4. Looking at the average write the GIGABYTE A75-D3H was 61MB/s faster than the F2A85X-UP4.

AMD SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Performance

There are a number of different Super Speed USB 3.0 host controllers out there. In order to know which ones perform the best we run a series of tests that will put the controller through the ringer and see how it comes out on the other side. Each of our motherboards uses a different Super Speed USB 3.0 controller and you can find the below.

CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for drives and enables rapid measurement of sequential and random read/write speeds. Note that CDM only supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with a queue depth of 32 (as noted) for the last listed benchmark score. This can skew some results in favor of controllers that also do not support NCQ.

Testing of the USB3 was done using the "Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station . The drive used was an Corsair Force GT 240Gb SSD.

Benchmark Results: The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 saw a significant jump in USB 3.0 performance over the GIGABYTE A75-D3H. The sequential read jumped from 196.3MB/s to 230.3MB/s and the sequential write jumped from 189.3MB/s to 236.4MB/s!

HD Tune Pro 5.00 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes
many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting,
folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file
benchmark.

AMD SuperSpeed USB 3.0 HD Tune 5.0 Read Benchmark Results

AMD SuperSpeed USB 3.0 HD Tune 5.00 Write Benchmark Results

Testing of the USB3 was done using the "Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station . The drive used was an Corsair Force GT 240Gb SSD.

Benchmark Results: Much like the above performance in CrystalDiskMark, HD Tune shows a very solid USB 3.0 performance increase between the AMD A75 chipset and the new AMD A85 chipset.

System Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple
power consumption tests on our test beds. The systems ran with identical
power supplies, Solid-Sate Drives, Memory kits and motherboards from
the same company. To measure idle usage, we ran the system at idle for
one hour on the desktop with no screen saver and took the measurement.
For load measurements, Prime95's in-place large FFT's were run on all
cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load for maximum
power consumption and heat. Curious about other test scenarios, we
decided to play some Sleeping Dogs and took the maximum
power consumption during a benchmark session.

Benchmark Results:We weren't expecting a huge power difference between the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 with the AMD A10-5800K 'Trinity' APU and the A75-D3H AMD A8-3870K 'Llano' APU, but we were pleasantly surprised when we saw a very nice decrease in power. The Trinity system used 23% less power at idle and 24% less power in Prime 95 than the Llano system! In games the AMD A10-5800K did use a tad bit more power than the A8-3870K processor, though there is a solid performance gain between the two.

GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 FM2 Overclocking

To overclock the AMD A10-5800K APU we decided to how far we could push the processor with the factory AMD retail boxed cooler. This is a budget processor and we figured that many will try to overclock with stock cooler.

We were able to get up to 4.2GHz by raising the multiplier from 38x to 42x without any voltage increase. To raise the multiplier past 42x we needed to increase the voltage from 1.425V to 1.475 to get full stability. At stock speed on the AMD A10-5800K APU we scored 3.28 pts on the Cinebench R11.5 CPU multi-threaded test. With the AMD A10-5800K APU overclocked to 4.4GHz we scored 3.41 pts. This is a nice increase, but we couldn't get it consistently and in other benchmarks like POV-Ray we found the score to be lower than stock.

We opened up CPU-Z and noticed that the processor was seldom running at 4400MHz and at times it was dropping down to 500-800MHz. It was clear to us at this point that the stock cooler was unable to handle the heat from the overclocked AMD A-Series APU. AMD OverDrive showed the AMD A10-5800K was hitting around 80C in various benchmarks, but we aren't sure if this was correct.

We tried Gigabyte EasyTune6, Coretemp and AMD OverDrive and none of them were reading the AMD A10-5800K processor correctly. AMD OverDrive build 626 was showing the processor at 0.0C at idle, so something isn't right.

We pulled the CPU cooler to make sure the HSF was making proper contact with the lid of the APU and it was found to be perfect.

We grabbed a socket AM3+ CPU coolers that we have from a retailed boxed Bulldozer processor that has a copper base plate and four heatpipes to see if it would help in the benchmarks. It ended up making a world of difference as the all the benchmark numbers at 4.4GHz improved due to the lower CPU temperatures as the processor was no longer throttling. This made it crystal clear to us that the stock APU cooler is only good for very mild overclocks.

With the larger CPU cooler we were able to raise the multiplier up two more increments, which means we were able to run 4600MHz with full stability. We did need to increase the CPU voltage to 1.500V to get total stability though. The better CPU cooler meant that we were able to squeeze an extra 200MHz out of the processor as well as run an extra 0.025V to it.

With the AMD A10-5800K APU running at 4.6GHz (46x multiplier) we were able to run Cinebench 11.5 at 3.67 pts. Not a bad improvement over the 3.28 pts scored at stock speeds.

One thing we noticed when running Cinebench is that CPU-Z reported that the processor went up to 5240MHz a couple times. It was only there for a second at a time, but it was! This multiplier was 46x, but the bus speed jumped up to 114MHz and that is where the extra clock frequency was coming from.

UPDATE: We told AMD about our overclocking results and they told us to disable Turbo mode in the BIOS. AMD believes that turbo core is throttling our overclock.

Here are the BIOS settings on the Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 motherboard that we were using. As you can see we just raised the CPU Clock Ratio to 46 and also bumped up the CPU Vcore to 1.50000V.

At the end of the day overclocking the AMD A10-5800K A-Series Trinity APU was interesting. The AMD A10-5800K boosts up to 4200MHz right out of the box, so we were expecting to get well over that on air. With the stock CPU cooler that comes with this processor we were able to get 4300MHz with full stability and 4400MHz with a bit of throttling if the room temperature was hot and the processor was at full load. To get an extra 100-200 MHz out of processor is far from exciting, but we were being limited by the CPU cooler. With the CPU switched out to a larger and better design we were able to reach 4600MHz with full stability. This is a much nicer overclock. With a high-quality aftermarket air cooler or a water cooling solution you should be able to easily hit right around 5GHz with ease. We used a Corsair H100 water cooler and was able to hit 5GHz with stability on this processor. Putting a $100 CPU cooler on a $120 processor isn't something many will do, so we focused on air cooling today with factory CPU cooling solutions.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 proved to be a rock solid motherboard today. Then again I wouldn't expect any less from the top AMD FM2 motherboard from GIGABYTE. I wasn't able to find any real issues with the F2A85X-UP4 during my time with it. Everything we did was smooth, and ran great. When it comes to the graphics performance of this system, we couldn't have been happier!

When using the integrated graphics on the AMD A10-5800K on the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 we were pretty much able to leave the much pricier Intel Core i7 3770K in the dust! Taking a quick look at 3DMark 11, the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 scored 1521 in the performance preset, running the same preset the Intel Core i7 3770 scored only 805 3DMarks, that's a huge difference, especially considering that the Intel system is considerably more expensive. Of course there are tests that have the Intel system coming out on top, namely anything that relies on x86 performance. It's all going to depend on what you plan on doing with the system.

When we worked on the overclocking section, we decided to stick with the stock cooling for our AMD A10-5800K. Our thoughts on this was who is going to stick a $100 dollar water cooler on a $130 processor. After seeing the announcement this we about the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 breaking the record kind of puts our 4.6GHz overclock to shame. At the AMD Extreme OC show in Taipei Taiwan, HiCookie, S.Dougal, and John Lam who are part of GIGABYTE's overclocking team 'The Killers' were able to set the record for the highest AMD Trinity frequency with a speed of 7.86GHz on an AMD A10-5800K APU!

There is definitely no doubt that the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 has some serious overclocking potential!

The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is at the upper end of the price spectrum for AMD FM2 motherboards. With a current price of $127.06 Shipped it is the second highest price AMD FM2 motherboard over at Newegg.com. Newegg currently offers 10 AMD A85X chipset based boards that use the ATX form factor with prices ranging from $92 up to $147. Is there much of a difference in the performance out of the box? Not likely since they all use the same exact chipset. In situations like this it comes down to the extra features and the quality of the individual components that the board has. The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 has great components and overclocking features and that is what makes this board stand out above the rest. If something should happen to the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 it is backed by GIGABYTE's three year warranty.

Legit Bottom Line: The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 may be on the higher side of the price range for FM2 motherboards, but the old adage you get what you pay for holds true today. The GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 is packed with features and performance to spare!